A Botanical Story of Slavery and
Survival
A Botanical Story of Slavery and
Survival
Some of the stories about the most massive forced migration in history are hard
to come by. Contrary to popular belief, there was a great variety in how Africans
experienced human trafficking and the ingenious ways that they developed to
survive the inhumane conditions. After decades of research on the African
Diaspora I recently came to understand slavery from a totally new perspective,
learning the botanical story of slavery and the plants that were brought to the
New World by Africans and their captors from the incredible book, In The
Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World.
Here are two plants whose stories demonstrate how the true wisdom of Africa has
travelled the world. That these stories are mostly unknown, shows us that more
must be done to decolonize our educational system and the academic research
that feeds it.
The Banana
The first bananas came from Asia. They were brought to Africa thousands of years
ago in what is known as the Monsoon Trade. The Africans used their farming
skills to domesticate and improve the plant, and it became a staple food in many
parts of the continent. When Europeans arrived in Africa, they found the banana
and the closely related plantain, to be excellent sources of food for the long and
difficult passage to the Americas. Upon arrival in the tropics, the two plants were
critical food sources for keeping alive the multitudes of new inhabitants that the
slave trade brought over. Some slave boats carried tons of banana and plantain
offshoots to be planted wherever the slaves they carried were sold. Many of those
slaves had been farmers and their knowledge fed the agricultural passage of the
banana to the New World. Although the first banana plantations were farmed by
slaves for their own food, the industry has grown into a post-colonial giant.
Ironically, many descendants of those same Africans work in the Banana
plantations of Latin America and the Caribbean. In these areas the plantations are
often the only source of sustainable employment. Working in these plantations
includes harsh physical labor and being exposed to agricultural chemicals on the
skin and in the air.
Cola Nut
When the Europeans arrived in Africa, each community they encountered was
using a traditional system for staying well. Medicinal plants and disease
prevention were part of daily life for all people. Each community would also have
a person or people who were specifically skilled at healing as their “job” in the
tribe. For those who were captured and forced to survive the harsh conditions of
their new home, medicine plant knowledge helped to keep them alive. An
important plant for that purpose was the Cola Nut, which was used on the slave
ships to keep the drinking/cooking water from spoiling over the long journey. As
some Africans shared this wisdom with their captors, others hid the plant on their
body. Fortunately, it was a common spiritual amulet at the time and so many
Africans were successful in planting the tree on arrival in the New World.
A local Afro-Costa Rican man, Wilfred Cornwall, was taught the art of healing
with plants from his grandmother. We can assume she inherited this healing
tradition from her African descendants, who also passed down to her the Cola Nut
and other African medicinal plants that she grew in her garden. She, like her
ancestors that were brought to the Caribbean as slaves, relied on these medicinal
plants for survival in unsanitary conditions and frequent starvation. Wilfred’s
grandmother taught him that the Cola Nut was called Bissy, a name brought
directly from Africa. He did not know that this was the same plant used to make
Coca Cola, whose original recipe included the powerful African extract among
other medicinal plants.
A top Costa Rican ethnobotanist, Rafael Ocampo, has been studying Afro-Costa
Rican medicinal plant use for decades. His strategy for public health is the
maintenance of the home garden. The tradition of growing important medicinal
plants near the home has kept African descendants in the Americas alive since
slavery. Urbanization, cultural assimilation and local regulations have decreased
the use of a home garden as a wellness tool, separating people from the plants
that keep them healthy. Modern diseases that are common in Afro-America such
as diabetes, heart failure, cancer and even mental health disorders, would have
been treated by the home garden in the days of Wilfred’s grandmother.
There is a growing international movement to ensure the rights of the
descendants of the millions of Africans that were stolen during the slave trade.
These rights include the right to health and livelihood. In support of this
movement, we need more research and books like In The Shadow of Slavery,
which help to understand and honor the role of African wisdom in the survival of
the people. In the case of the public health system, justice would include health
care options that reflect ancestral traditions such as access to gardens, medicinal
plants and information about how to use them, access to ritual and African-based
spiritual practices and the right to make an informed choice between drinking a
Bissy tea or a Coca Cola.
Check out our new African Sacred Grove project, which was also inspired by In
The Shadow of Slavery.
Primary Source Carney, Judith A. & Rosomoff, Richard Nicholas. In The Shadow
of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. University of
California Press, Los Angeles, California. 2009